Small Steps
by trufflemores
Summary: 2.06. It takes Barry a week to recover.


" _I think he's waking up_."

That's Cisco's voice.

" _Barry?_ " Caitlin's. Louder, she repeats, " _Barry?_ " Barry tips his head towards her voice, acknowledging her. She relaxes, her next question pitched to calm: " _Can you hear me?_ "

An eyebrow twitches. _Yes._ Opening his eyes, he sees two relieved faces come into view. Despite his escalating awareness of the pain, his heart rate slows. " _Hey_ ," he rasps. More air than words.

They both smile. Cisco laughs shakily. "You scared the crap out of us, dude," he says slowly. "You were gone for a long time."

Caitlin nods. Barry wants to ask, _How long?_ He's tired, though, tired enough that he knows he won't be up long. So he asks the more important question: "How bad is it?"

"Bad," Caitlin whispers. "If you didn't heal so quickly I'd be very worried." He's never heard her speak so softly, like she's at a church, or a funeral.

He wants to tell her _I'm okay._ Put her at ease. She looks tired, too.

But he has to know: "Linda, how is she?"

"She's fine," Cisco replies, "she's staying out with some friends in Coast City."

Looking between them, he asks the obvious. "Zoom?"

They don't respond immediately. Caitlin looks down, mouth open like she might speak, but Cisco is the one to respond. "Let's - let's worry about Zoom when you're up and about, 'kay?"

Then his hand claps Barry's leg.

Horror rushes through Barry. _I didn't - I didn't feel that_.

He starts to sit up. Caitlin puts both hands on his bare shoulder. "Oh, no, you're staying put," she warns.

He ignores her, reaching for the dead weight attached to his hips. The blankets feel like they belong to another person. He can taste bile. _Oh my god._

"Yeah, seriously, you got your ass kicked," Cisco chimes in, oblivious.

"No, guys - I can't feel my legs." It's sinking in fast, now, panicked speech the only outward sign of his distress. Looking right at them, he repeats, "I can't feel my legs."

They look at each other. Caitlin looks haunted; Cisco, horrified. "I - can't - feel - my - legs," Barry repeats, crushing his fingers around them. His hands go white-knuckled, but he picks up nothing below the waist. Nothing.

They aren't his. They can't be.

Caitlin tells him, "Breathe, Barry."

He tries to. The nasal cannula feels disruptive, the neck brace even more so. Unconsciously he reaches up to take them off. Cisco captures his hand in both of his. "Easy," he cautions, tone low and pitched to soothe. It doesn't slow Barry's pounding heart.

 _Why can't I feel them?_

He knows why, remembers why, felt its impact in his soul: Zoom lashed out and something _snapped_ , his entire body folding as he crumpled, doll-like, on the pavement. He couldn't have moved if he'd tried. Utterly paralyzed, he'd lied in the street and endured, helpless to stop Zoom. But he hadn't thought - he didn't dare think -

 _I'm paralyzed_.

Something in his expression must say _I'm going to throw up_ because a trash bin is under his hands just in time. He purges the last twelve hours from memory, the stress of the ordeal catching up with him. His thoughts are stuck on a loop of _this can't be happening_.

He's _The Flash_. His legs are his world. _I can't lose my legs_.

They're still there, punishingly unresponsive. Barry closes his eyes, ears ringing. Cisco takes the bin and it slides easily out of his grasp, hands numb. He didn't just lose the fight. He lost the _war_.

 _I can't be The Flash without my legs_.

Wakefulness is a crushing headache and sleep is desperate reprieve. His eyelids flutter in a final attempt to open them, to look to Cisco and Caitlin for answers. But then he sinks and the world is gone.

. o .

When Barry wakes up a second time, he knows it's nighttime.

There's a feeling in the air, a restfulness punctuated by Cisco's sleeping form in a chair nearby. He looks tired: shoulders slouched deep with sleep, head cradled in a slipping palm, his eyes are framed by dark circles.

Barry closes his own for a moment, acclimating to consciousness. His chest hurts, caved-in by those Speed-suppressing darts, fractured ribs protesting the slightest movement. His stomach aches, too, the lingering taste of blood making him gag. Sitting up for stability makes his back sear, enormous, inescapable pain branding him. He grits his teeth and leans back, breathing erratically through his nose, trying not to wake Cisco. _I screwed up_.

He can barely breathe, but he holds onto wakefulness. He has a city to protect. He can't abandon them to Zoom. _Heal_ , he commands the lightning under his skin. _Heal_.

A clock on the wall tells him that it's almost midnight. Night shift. _Get up_.

Twenty minutes pass, a silent war waged against the fires cropping up every time he moves. He's sitting fully upright for the first time in thirty hours by one AM. Bitterness sinks in, impatience and anguish arising at the reality. He can't _move_.

Hunger makes his stomach growl, his frustration piquing as instinct compels him to try to get up. His legs don't even twitch. Shame burns his face as he realizes how naively optimistic his original assessment was. _You won't heal from this_.

Barry crushes the blanket in his hand, resisting the urge to swear out loud. Cisco deserves the sleep. He kept Barry alive. Caitlin, too.

 _Caitlin_.

Barry scans the room, range limited by the neck brace. He twitches a fraction too far and pain electrifies the contact, eyes closing as nerves fire up. Irritation overrides discomfort and he reaches up blindly with one hand, fumbling with the straps. It hooks up behind his head, difficult to pry off two-handed on his own, nigh impossible with one. He still tries, the burn in his side constant, the hunger gnawing, until at last he hears Velcro unpeel.

Cisco jerks upright, almost to his feet. "Where's the fire?" he mumbles, rubbing his eyes.

Barry steels himself against embarrassment at getting caught, pulling the strap off all the way. The release in pressure is somehow sweet and terrible, like taking off a life vest in deep water, freeing up his motion at a dangerous cost. He ignores the spike of discomfort on his left side as he reaches up quickly - _rip off a bandaid_ \- to free that side, Flashing through it so Cisco won't stop him.

Setting the brace down, he exhales slowly, ignoring the black spots jumping across his sightline. His arm trembles when he lowers it, his chin sinking to his chest. Cisco is at his side and Barry hears movement in the next room before Caitlin is there, too. " _Barry_ ," she berates, and he feels a lump in his throat because the absurdity of trying to free himself hits him.

 _Where would you even go?_

He whispers, "I'm sorry." He hates how close he is to tears, tamping the emotion _down_. He will not cry. He will _not_.

It only takes her thirty seconds to fix what took him ten times as long to achieve, back sinking against the pillows once more as she helps him lean back. _Fastest man alive_ , he thinks, and a tear slips down his cheek. _You can't even_ stand.

It's somehow better and worse when he hears a familiar, bracingly robust voice speak. "Hey, Bar."

 _Iris._

Caitlin and Cisco give them space - Cisco with a gentle squeeze to his shoulder, Caitlin with a final check to the IV hooked up to his arm - and Iris pulls a chair up next to him. Barry doesn't open his eyes, hands flat on the sheets.

She slides her hand underneath one of his, squeezing it. He doesn't respond.

A cool plastic cup slides into his opposite hand. He lifts the drink to his lips and sips. It's one of the richest beverages he's ever consumed, a vanilla milkshake in theory but a speedster supplement in practice; he's comfortably full by the time he finishes it. The fuzziness in his head clears, crushing despair ameliorated. He opens his eyes and looks at her for the first time, gratitude sweeping over him. _You're okay_. "Thank you," he murmurs, passing the empty cup back to her.

She takes it and sets it aside, squeezing his hand again. This time, he squeezes back.

"What do you need?" she asks.

 _My legs_.

He shivers instead, an involuntary response, and she lets go of his hand for a moment - _no, Iris, come back_ \- before draping a soft blanket over his torso. "Better?"

He fishes for her hand, relaxing when she captures his. "Much," he rasps. "Thank you." The lightning is usually its own source of warmth, low-burning, and he can't help but remark, "I don't get cold." _Not this easily_.

"You've been through a lot," Iris says.

 _Shock_ , Barry thinks, recalling the way victims looked around the CCPD, cloaked in gray blankets and gazing wide-eyed at the floor.

"Cait diluted the Speed-suppressing serum as much as she could, but your metabolism is still a lot slower than usual," Iris continues, thumb rubbing along the back of his knuckles slowly.

It's obvious when he focuses on it, heart cantering at an almost human pace. The lightning feels subdued, too, like his connection with it is off. Muffled.

It also, he thinks ruefully, makes him _tired_.

Full, warm, and safe with Iris at his side, he tries to keep his eyes open. Tries.

Iris stays.

. o .

 _Look … at your ... hero._

Barry stares at the Flash suit, gripping the arms of the wheelchair hard.

 _This man is no_ god.

He can hear the news report in the background. _Flash missing_ , they say, over and over. _Vanishes in crisis._

 _I'm right here_ , Barry wants to reply.

But he isn't. The Flash is the suit. Barry is only the strings that pull it.

 _You can't even_ stand.

Sick with shame, he turns the chair away. Turns the news off. Wheels down the hallway. Caitlin and Cisco have barely left his side, but they let him go this time. Even Iris hangs back, recognizing his despair for what it is.

Outside, it smells like a storm. Hugging the building, Barry finds a blind spot under the surveillance cameras and stops. Thunder rumbles distantly; raindrops speckles his arms. He breathes in and out, trying to keep it steady, all too aware that he could no sooner step out of the path of an oncoming train than Zoom.

 _You failed._

He's soaked to the skin by the time Iris finds him. He doesn't move, doesn't acknowledge her in any way, holding onto the feeling. It's easier to be numb than awake, a space where he can only just feel those still burning fires in his chest, his head, his back. He looks out at the city, his city, _Flash's_ city, and forces himself to breathe past the lump in his throat.

 _You have failed this city._

Oliver would be so disappointed.

He can feel the arrowheads against his shoulders. Wonders if he'll ever learn the lesson. Looks over when Iris puts a hand on his arm.

Wheeling back inside, he grimaces at the wash of refrigerated air, tempted to stay outside in the rain. Become part of the earth. Anything to escape his own skin.

It's been three days since he fought Zoom. It feels like centuries.

. o .

Day four feels like recovery.

The neck brace is gone. He stays awake for more hours than he sleeps. And he can almost fool himself that he feels something in his legs when he presses down on them hard enough. Like a phantom sensation, a remembered feeling, but one so immediate it almost startles him into false victory.

When he pushes against the chair - _get up, get up, get up_ \- they won't bear an ounce of his weight.

 _Soon_ , he tells himself fiercely, spending hours rubbing and crushing them, stabbing them, burning them, icing them, _anything_ to bring out sensation. Speed erases the cuts and bruises but does nothing for the deadness. He could chop them off without feeling a thing. No matter how close to _okay_ he comes, he's still an ocean away.

But the belief - and Caitlin's tentative admissions that he seems to be healing - gives him courage.

. o .

Day five is a setback.

He's sick of home and STAR Labs, sick of feeling tired all the time. He's sick of being in his own skin, in Wells' - Eobard's - chair. He's sick of feeling terrible, managing dizziness at best and excruciating pain at worst. He's sick of looking at the news and seeing his name all over it, aware that he can't confirm or deny their worst fears.

So he tries to stand.

He tries until he's angry, legs unresponsive and arms still stupidly _weak_ , and then he pushes himself upright and the chair slips out from under him.

He has a phone. He could call someone.

But even though his chest hurts and his legs are twisted awkwardly underneath him, driving a knife into the middle of his back, he doesn't. He can barely breathe for a different reason.

 _It's been five days_.

And he still can't feel a thing.

He drags himself to the wall, sitting up against it. The gesture feels weird and unbalanced without any feedback from the lower half of his body, like trying to swim with his arms tied behind his back. He holds his ground, grateful that no one is around to see him.

Caitlin and Cisco finally left to get some real sleep and Joe and Iris are at work. He's "resting."

He doesn't know how much time it takes to drag himself back into the chair. It's an exhausting, disheartening process. It's hard without help. But he refuses to be caught huddled on the floor. Zoom took his legs. He doesn't get to take his dignity, too.

 _Come on_ , he cajoles himself when his conviction flags, only half in the chair, tired and frustrated. _Come on._

Then the Arrow walks in.

Oliver doesn't say a word, putting a foot on one of the wheels to keep the chair in place. Barry uses the anchorage to haul himself the rest of the way up, arms shaky with exhaustion and face burning with shame. In his normal, unflappable Oliver voice, Oliver says without preamble, "One time an archer put me in the hospital. Dig kept me sane. I was going stir crazy. He brought cards." He walks ahead, leading the way, and Barry trails, grateful for the chair's electronic power. He isn't sure he could push the wheels if he tried. "Tommy helped, too. Brought me all seven Harry Potter movies. 'Soap operas are only safe to consume with tequila, which you are not allowed to drink, therefore-'" brandishing a DVD, Oliver finishes, "'this is the next best I can do.'"

They carve out a comfortable corner in Cisco's lab, projector down, popcorn procured and a chair pulled up for Oliver. It must strain his patience, Barry thinks as he munches on his fourth bag of popcorn, to sit still for two and a half hours. But he does so without complaint - albeit, with a fair amount of mutual commentary - and when Barry dozes halfway through _Chamber of Secrets_ , Oliver doesn't wake him.

Half-conscious, Barry hears Oliver get up. _Wake up,_ he tells himself. _Before he's gone_. But before he can rally the strength, a thick blanket wraps around his shoulders, cocooning him in warmth. Oliver settles into the chair beside him, and Barry hears him speaking softly on the phone to Felicity - maybe Dig, too. He wants to tell Oliver to put them on speaker because they sound worried, from what Barry gathers, but the world slips out of focus first.

At some point - and Barry can't tell if it's even real, he's so _tired_ \- he's awoken to a gentle shake on his shoulder. Oliver says something quiet and incomprehensible, and Barry nods in response. Doesn't catch a word, but- _Sure, Ollie_.

Oliver squeezes his shoulder, and stupidly Barry feels tears, stunned that any of this is _real_. He really can't walk. This isn't just a terrible, extended nightmare.

Then Oliver leans in and hugs him, a big promise of a bear hug that _everything will be okay_. Barry wonders if Dig taught him that, too, how to stabilize someone's world.

Either way, he holds onto it, long after Oliver is gone.

. o .

Six days after Zoom, he wakes up to a breakthrough.

 _Sensation_.

Barry rubs his own thighs with a sense of wonder, his knees, his feet, scarcely daring to believe what his body is telling him. Even though he still needs Joe's help to get through most of the morning - the couch is still more comfortable to him than a STAR Labs' gurney - he feels a renewed sense of possibility on the horizon.

At STAR Labs', he's eager to share the news. Cisco breaks into a big smile and Caitlin projects that he might even be able to take a step or two soon. It seems surreal to him that it's a victory, but the pounding joy in his heart won't be suppressed.

A step or two.

 _One small step for man…_

One giant leap for _The Flash_.

. o .

It's still terrifying to take that first step. Even _standing_ on his own is a rush when none of them knew if he ever would again. But walking - walking is scarier. Because if he fails to stand, he hasn't lost much. If he fails to walk, then he'll fall.

Joe has a steadying hand on his shoulder. "I've got you, Bar," he promises.

Barry nods. The cane helps, a little, a safety net of sorts. It won't stop his fall, but it takes some of his weight, taking some of the pressure off with it.

Joe lets go and very, very carefully, seven days since Zoom broke his back, Barry takes his first steps.

 _One._ It hurts, a lot more than he expects, and he almost crumples, but he holds his ground. They're all watching him. He can do this. _Two._ A fine tremble builds under his skin, a warning message. _Don't go too far._

 _Three._

The trembling reaches flashpoint proportions: _I'm going to fall_.

He breaks. "I can't - I can't do this right now," he gasps, Joe's hands coming up around him, guiding him back to the chair. Three searing steps separate him and safety, but the pain is infinitely preferable to collapse.

They're proud of him, he knows, but all he can feel is defeated. _Six whole steps. Someone get me a Bozo pin._

Cisco claps his shoulder, telling him to cut himself a break. _You just broke your back._

Barry feels sick with disappointment, wondering how many days, weeks, _months_ separate him and something more substantial than six faltering steps.

Reaching up to adjust his collar, he can still feel the bruises from Zoom's _demonic claws_. There's a stubborn out of breath feeling clinging to him. It's an unfamiliar sensation post-lightning strike, like an asthma attack, disarming and unexpected. He asks Caitlin about it and she says in her most reassuring Doctor Snow voice, "That's totally normal with a spinal cord injury. It should clear up soon."

Barry wheels towards the suit, dismayed at the reminder that he has so much farther to _go_.

"A normal person would be paralyzed for the rest of their life," Iris reminds him.

 _I'm not normal,_ he wants to say.

They talk about his progress and it is progress and he should feel good about progress, but he looks at the suit and sees how empty it is, and how tall, and how impossible it seems that he could wear it again.

Six whole steps.

The bitter taste in his mouth won't go away.

. o .

Maybe it doesn't do anything for him medically, but a hug from his dad goes a long way towards healing.

. o .

Grodd takes Caitlin.

Barry stares at the monitors in anguish, all too aware that strength has not miraculously returned to him in his hour of need. There is no forced progress to be made. It has to be earned.

He's fine, physiologically - fine as he can be on colt legs that only half-remember how to bear weight.

The thought of running at super speed makes his chest tighten. If he crashes, it could be ugly. He already hit the ground _hard_ on the treadmill, necessitating a moment alone to regain his composure. That was slow, contained, and the floors don't hurt any more than a sturdy gym mat when he hits them. Winding, but not necessarily back-breaking.

Out in the field? Anything could happen.

 _Could you survive a second fall?_

He barely survived the first.

He looks down at his legs and clenches his fists on top of them.

 _She saved your life._

There is no alternative: he has to save hers.

. o .

He's pretty sure Grodd comes close to dislocating a few vertebrae and _definitely_ cracks a few ribs when he puts thousands of pounds of pressure on his chest, but he's even more sure that Caitlin is going to _die_ if he doesn't act. Flash's energy compensates what Barry lacks in physical strength, helping him back up.

 _Fight. For them. For this city._

 _You're_ The Flash.

He acts and Goliath falls. The portal swallows Grodd whole.

Breathless and relieved, Barry checks in - _you okay?_ \- before the enormity of it all hits him.

It's been almost ten days since Zoom attacked him. And he just took down a super gorilla.

In Flash's suit, he doesn't feel at home, not yet - it'll take a lifetime, his own death, before he really feels _comfortable_ with the role - but he can stand.

He can _run_.

He can protect his city.

And at the end of the day, that's all he asks. His friends, his own life. His city.

No matter what, Zoom can't have them.


End file.
